Disappeared News

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

It’s considered bad journalism to run press releases. Well, ok. Here’s a press release. It’s an important story and is well written. When you read this story in print or on the web tomorrow, see how much of this mainstream journalists have simply used anyway, or struggled to look like they didn’t.

I can’t explain it better. And I have to finish up some other work, so will take a shortcut here.

Note in the last paragraph (City cannot discriminate against recent arrivals in its “Housing First” placements) what a quandary the City will find itself in if it does not have a program to develop gobs of affordable housing: indeed, people may flock to Hawaii to take advantage of so-called “Housing First” opportunities. With no program to produce the tens of thousands of units of truly affordable housing needed for current Hawaii residents, could the City’s feeble program be swamped by outsiders? This has been a fear all along, and certainly should be discussed.

In response to a complaint from the ACLU of Hawai‘i and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, the City and County of Honolulu (“City”) has reversed course on discriminatory rules at the proposed Sand Island homeless facility. Contrary to its prior plan, the City has now agreed that individuals fleeing from domestic violence or coming from a mental health facility may seek refuge at the facility, eliminating discriminatory practices that violated federal and state law.

The Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, among other federal and state laws, prohibit housing discrimination against women, who make up the vast majority of domestic violence survivors, and people with mental health disabilities. Given that mental illness and domestic violence are often contributing factors leading to homelessness, these persons equally deserve access to City programs offering housing and services.”

“Cities should extend housing supports to domestic violence survivors, rather than compound their trauma by denying emergency shelter,” said Sandra Park, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.

This is not the first time that the City agreed to change discriminatory policies in response to an ACLU complaint. Earlier this year, the City modified plans for its “Housing First” program with the Institute for Human Services, which originally sought to deny services to homeless persons who had recently arrived in Hawai‘i. The ACLU alerted the City that these exclusions would violate the Constitution (because government services must be available equally to all legal residents, regardless of when they arrived), and the City modified the policy to ensure equal access to all homeless individuals.